Barack Obama's state director says his success and treasured experiences happened because he decided to make Des Moines his home.

Nov. 19, 2012

President Barack Obama meets Brad Anderson and his family. / Special to the Register

TODD ERZEN covers young professionals in central Iowa. Have a story idea for him? Send an email to terzen@dmreg .com or call 515-284-8527. Follow Todd on Twitter: @todderzen. Read our YP blog at www.DesMoinesRegister.com/yp.

More Brad Anderson

A look at Anderson’s political road:• 1997-98: Edwards for Senate (research) • 1999-00: Democratic National Committee (research) • 2001-02: Harkin for Senate (research director) • 2003-04: John Edwards for President (Iowa political adviser) • 2006: Chet Culver for Governor (communications director) • 2007-08: Office of the Governor (communications director) • 2008: Obama for America (communications director) • 2012: Obama for America (Iowa state director) The re-election of President Obama means Anderson, 37, can now return to splitting time between his three day jobs. Here’s when he got involved with each of them and a little more about what the companies do: • Link Strategies (2004-06, consultant; 2009-12, partner) — Political consulting firm providing general consulting as well as communications and research consulting to local, national and international candidates and organizations. • LPCA Public Strategies (2011-12, partner) — A public and government relations firm that finds innovative solutions to fit clients' needs. • My Digital Manager (2011-12, co-founder) — A user-friendly, Web-based application to organize videos and other digital files and make it easier to store, search and share video and digital content.

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Welcome to Brad Anderson’s wild ride.

The son of the founder of the Successories (motivational office decor) franchise lived in a lot of different places growing up and had already pitched in on a few national political campaigns by the time he spent six months in Iowa helping Sen. Tom Harkin win re-election in 2002.

After that it only seemed natural for Anderson to quickly move back to Washington, D.C., where he had worked for the Democratic National Committee during Al Gore’s 2000 presidential run, to see what and where was next.

But upon attending a reunion party there with some of his fellow Iowa campaign veterans, a heavy dose of nostalgia set in. So Anderson and his wife had a talk. They managed to convince one another they weren’t crazy, then repacked their things. Just months later were back in town to call Des Moines their permanent home.

One of Anderson’s favorite pieces of advice from his father’s ‘Successories’ business is this: “You’ll always miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

And so it was that 10 years later, on Election Day, Anderson was standing with 20,000 others in the East Village. At 37, he was soaking up the final moments of leading Iowa’s campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama.

“Perhaps never again in my life will Iowa again be so prominent in a presidential campaign,” said Anderson, who pointed out that the president’s election eve event was the 37th such trip to Iowa by the Obama/Biden team during the 2012 general election — compared to just three back in 2008.

“President Obama closed the night talking about Iowa in very personal terms, and that was awesome. And it was surreal running into Bruce Springsteen on the way to the bathroom.”

It’s all a far cry from when Anderson enrolled as a freshman at North Carolina State University with the intent of majoring in civil engineering. Just a year later he was selecting his courses for his sophomore year and found himself unable to make peace with one of his requirements: solid waste management.

“It was at that moment I knew it wasn’t where my heart was,” Anderson said.

Political science and criminal justice became his next thing, with the ultimate intention of enrolling in law school. He had grown up in a Republican family and said he had never really picked his own side of the political aisle until he finally hit upon on the mantra that has guided him to this day: Fairness.

“That’s the one thing that drives me more than anything else,” Anderson said. “In college I learned how lucky I was and how many breaks I had been given. It was all about getting to know people with different backgrounds from me. It crystallized in me that some of those people needed an advocate, and I realized the Democratic Party really represented what I believed in.”

Anderson’s first political campaign upon graduation was as a researcher for John Edwards’ U.S. Senate bid in 1998. He wasn’t supposed to win, but he did, and said those coattails suddenly provided Anderson with “all sorts of opportunities” in the political world and spurred the permanent casting aside of his legal ambitions.

His wife, Lisa, has been along for the ride almost from the beginning, and said it’s hard to imagine her husband doing anything else.

“He is really cut out for this,” she said. “He is very good at presenting things in a simple way that can be inspiring. It doesn’t matter who you are. He’ll be really good at talking to you.”

A priority of Anderson’s during the 2012 campaign was for President Obama’s re-election effort to dovetail effectively with down-ballot Congressional and state Legislative races. His role as communications director during Obama’s 2008 Iowa campaign convinced him that the Democrats’ overall team concept could be improved upon.

Anderson also emphasized a grassroots, versus a top-down approach to inspiring volunteers.

“I made sure everyone was on the same page and crystal clear in terms of goals and purpose,” Anderson said. “Then we allowed them to really take the reins on their own turf and to devise their own tactics and strategies.”

Jeff Link, a longtime Iowa politico himself and one of Anderson’s business partners, said the friend he first got to know during the 2002 Harkin re-election bid excels at wearing many hats. Whether handling communications for Gov. Chet Culver, or the 2008 Obama campaign, or crunching the local numbers with such Nate Silver-like skill that he could be “incredibly confident” of an Iowa victory on election day, Anderson is the guy you want with the ball in his hand for the big shot, Link said.

“Every time he seems to rise to the occasion, and he just keeps getting better,” Link said. “He also never passes the buck, and I think that is why he had such a loyal following with his campaign staff. To be honest, I was worried he was going to be recruited away from here and back to Washington, D.C. I’m sure he could have had his choice of jobs.”

That’s not going to happen, though, said Anderson. He has lived in Iowa longer than anywhere else, and moving would mean giving up on things like the Sunday night dinners with friends that have taken place almost every week for about the last eight years.

It would mean taking a pass on bouncing around from project to project between the three different consulting, communications and research companies he has helped build.

And it would perhaps mean taking for granted the privilege of riding on a three-day bus trip across Iowa with the president last August, or the quiet lunch Anderson had with Obama and just a few others one fall day during a campaign stop at Cornell College in Mount Vernon.

Those were gifts he wouldn’t trade for much of anything, Anderson said, and they happened because he came to Iowa.